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By:

Rajendra Joshi

3 December 2024 at 9:20:26 am

Rajesh Kshirsagar walks into a political trap

The Shiv Sena MLA has chosen confrontation over the Shaktipeeth Expressway risking political isolation Kolhapur: Shiv Sena MLA Rajesh Kshirsagar’s aggressive support to the proposed Shaktipeeth Expressway has brought him face-to-face with former MP Raju Shetti. But the political fallout has not stopped there. In quick succession, he has taken on Congress leader Satej Patil, questioned the position of fellow Mahayuti legislator Chandradip Narake and criticised his own party colleague, Public...

Rajesh Kshirsagar walks into a political trap

The Shiv Sena MLA has chosen confrontation over the Shaktipeeth Expressway risking political isolation Kolhapur: Shiv Sena MLA Rajesh Kshirsagar’s aggressive support to the proposed Shaktipeeth Expressway has brought him face-to-face with former MP Raju Shetti. But the political fallout has not stopped there. In quick succession, he has taken on Congress leader Satej Patil, questioned the position of fellow Mahayuti legislator Chandradip Narake and criticised his own party colleague, Public Health Minister and Kolhapur Guardian Minister Prakash Abitkar. That is a lot of political fronts for one MLA to manage simultaneously. The immediate question, therefore, is not whether Kshirsagar has the courage to fight. He clearly does. The more important question is whether he has calculated the political cost of fighting everyone at once. The Shaktipeeth Expressway has become one of the most contentious political issues in Kolhapur district. Raju Shetti has turned the proposed acquisition of agricultural land into a farmers’ rights issue and has built a sustained campaign around it. His politics has always thrived on confrontation. His rise from the sugarcane farmers’ movement to the Assembly and then the Lok Sabha was built on his ability to convert farmers’ grievances into political mobilisation. Kshirsagar has now chosen to meet that politics head-on. His controversial warning against Shetti, in response to the latter’s aggressive rhetoric on land acquisition, transformed a policy disagreement into a personal political duel. Supporters of both sides have since taken the confrontation to the streets. This is precisely where political calculation becomes important. Supporting a flagship project backed by the Chief Minister can certainly send a message to the leadership in Mumbai. Kshirsagar is willing to stand by the government when the going gets difficult. But the same position can create political liabilities at home, particularly when the project affects constituencies where local MLAs are under pressure from farmers. Different Question Kshirsagar’s decision to attack Satej Patil raises a different question. Patil remains one of the most influential political figures in Kolhapur. Suggesting that he may struggle to win the next Assembly election is not routine political criticism. It is an open challenge. That challenge may energise Kshirsagar’s supporters. It may also consolidate his position among those within the ruling establishment who see Patil as a principal political adversary. But there is a danger in confusing political visibility with political strength. Every additional opponent creates another front that has to be managed during an election. And Kshirsagar has already opened several. The most politically revealing part of Kshirsagar’s criticism of Chandradip Narake and Prakash Abitkar. Narake represents a constituency through which the Shaktipeeth project passes. His opposition, therefore, has an obvious electoral logic: he has to respond to the concerns of his voters. Kshirsagar’s criticism of Narake puts him in a difficult position. He is effectively asking another ruling-party MLA to subordinate constituency politics to the government’s larger project. Then came the attack on Abitkar. To publicly accuse the party’s Kolhapur Guardian Minister of failing to strengthen the organisation amounts to washing the party’s dirty linen in public. Ministerial Ambition There is another possible explanation for Kshirsagar’s increasingly combative posture: the unresolved question of ministerial ambition. A three-time MLA would naturally expect that electoral experience and political seniority might eventually translate into a Cabinet berth. Instead, when the opportunity came, Eknath Shinde chose Prakash Abitkar and gave him an important Cabinet portfolio. Kshirsagar was left outside the ministry. His present position on the State Planning Board gives him a role, but it is not the same political currency as a Cabinet berth. It would be simplistic to suggest that every recent statement is merely an expression of that disappointment. But it would be equally naïve to ignore the possibility that political frustration has influenced his increasingly assertive posture. The Shaktipeeth issue may simply have provided the trigger. Kshirsagar should also be looking closely at the arithmetic of Kolhapur North. The constituency has a history of surprising political outcomes. Its old-city peth culture is blunt, politically conscious and capable of producing results that defy conventional calculations. The last Assembly election demonstrated this dramatically. Madhurimaraje Chhatrapati’s withdrawal as the Congress candidate left the Opposition scrambling just weeks before polling. Satej Patil then backed municipal corporator Rajesh Latkar, who entered the contest with barely 15 days to campaign. Yet Latkar secured nearly 81,000 votes. Kshirsagar won by around 23,000 votes, but the number that should concern his camp is not merely his winning margin.

Phantom Promises

The unravelling of the Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana was always a matter of when, not if. Announced with theatrical flourish ahead of the 2024 Assembly election by the ruling Mahayuti coalition, the scheme promised Rs. 1,500 a month to women across the state. It became the Mahayuti government’s showpiece welfare programme and, by all accounts, a decisive political instrument that helped propel the ruling alliance to a comfortable victory. Less than two years later, the curtain has now fallen. Nearly 92 lakh beneficiaries – a whopping 38 percent of those initially enrolled – are now being shown the door as the scheme becomes economically untenable.


If such a staggering proportion of beneficiaries never qualified in the first place, what exactly was the government doing when it rolled out the scheme with such urgency? The scheme is a classic case of welfare as a cold election strategy rather than a governance policy.


The scheme’s benefits flowed generously just before the election. The scrutiny that has now arrived has exposed it for what it was: a fiscal white elephant. The Comptroller and Auditor General has now compounded the Mahayuti’s embarrassment with its report, which questions expenditure of more than Rs. 3,541 crore under the scheme. Such spending places an unsustainable burden on Maharashtra’s finances. The CAG’s report is an indictment of a style of governance that treats the public exchequer as an extension of the campaign war chest.


Across India, governments of every political persuasion have perfected the art of competitive populism. Cash transfers, freebies and subsidies are unveiled with increasing frequency, often without credible fiscal planning or robust verification mechanisms. Welfare has become less about empowering citizens than about cultivating dependable vote banks.


Schemes designed primarily for electoral dividends inevitably collapse under their own contradictions, leaving beneficiaries disillusioned and public finances weakened.


The greatest injustice is borne not by politicians but by ordinary citizens. Honest taxpayers finance these extravagant promises. Genuine beneficiaries build their household budgets around them. When governments later discover that millions were ‘ineligible,’ it is ordinary families, and not the politicians or their families, who suffer the consequences.


If money has indeed been squandered because of political haste, accountability cannot stop with bureaucrats or clerks processing applications. Those who conceived, announced and relentlessly campaigned on the scheme must also bear responsibility. The leaders of the three ruling Mahayuti partners – the BJP, the NCP and the Shiv Sena - who converted public money into political capital should be prepared to answer financially as well as politically.


Democracy cannot become an auction where elections are won with taxpayers’ wallets. It is time to end the politics of fiscal bribery masquerading as welfare. Maharashtra deserves governments that create opportunity, not dependency, and policies that survive beyond polling day.

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